Bruce Avolio

After becoming one of the top scholars on transformational leadership, Bruce Avolio has spent the past several years devising evidence-based models and methods to accelerate the development of authentic, ethical and transformational leadership. Most recently directing the University of Nebraska’s Global Leadership Institute, he has supported the launch and validation of development programs the world over, shaping leaders of schools, corporations, non-profits, governments, hospitals and military units.

Media Mentions

Listed below are the media mentions of the center and its director, Bruce J. Avolio. For articles and blog posts written by Bruce, visit the Foster blog or his Google Scholar page.

Books

Organizational Transformation: How To Achieve It, One Person At A Time
It is estimated that approximately seventy percent of organizations fail in their attempts to implement transformative change. This book will help lessen that rate. Using real-world examples, Bruce J. Avolio maps four states of change that any organization must go through: identifying and recognizing, initiating,
emerging and impending, and institutionalizing new ways of operating. Each state is described in detail, as are the leadership qualities necessary to solidify and transition from one to the next. These “in-between moments” are an often-overlooked key to organizational transformation. So too is the fact that
organizational change happens one individual at a time. For transformation to take root, each person must shift his or her sense of self at work and the role that he or she plays in the transforming organization.
Intended as a road map, rather than a “how-to” manual with fixed procedures, Organizational Transformation will help leaders to locate their organization’s position on a continuum of progress and confidently navigate planned, whole-systems change, overcoming the challenges of growing from and adjusting to watershed moments.

Psychological Capital and Beyond
Psychological Capital and Beyond published in 2015 is an updated version of Psychological capital: Developing the human competitive edge published in 2007. Since Luthans, Youssef-Morgan and Avolio introduced Psychological Capital (PsyCap) in their first book, it has received widespread attention and popularity in positive organizational behavior. The research and application of PsyCap has made a global impact, and the authors provide convincing evidence that PsyCap can be validly measured in a variety of settings and conditions. They also provide evidence that PsyCap predicts desired outcomes like organizational performance, teamwork, and leadership better as a holistic construct rather than its individual components.

Beyond a basic introduction to PsyCap and its framework, the book provides in-depth information about the components of PsyCap: hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism. It also moves beyond the currently understood construct to explore other potential additions to PsyCap, including creativity, flow, and authenticity to name a few. Interestingly, the book also manages to illustrate approaches to measuring the return on PsyCap investment, and in wrapping up, the final chapter summarizes the present and future of PsyCap and offers future implications and directions for PsyCap research and practice.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the expansion of the well-established PsyCap construct. In addition to the original components—hope, self-efficacy, resilience and optimism (HERO), the authors explore other potential positive constructs that also build psychological capital—creativity, flow, mindfulness, gratitude, forgiveness, emotional intelligence, spirituality, authenticity, and courage. This is promising news for practitioners and researchers interested in many of these positive psychology constructs, who are seeking a constructive voice that integrates these with PsyCap. To see what this looks like, check out the benchmark tables provided in chapters 7 and 8. If nothing else, this much needed comprehensive look reaffirms that PsyCap is not a stagnant framework, but growing and evolving through its developmental journey.

Another refreshing aspect of this volume is the explicit claims about return on investment (ROI). Demonstrating ROI is possibly among the most pressing concerns for practitioners in positive psychology. Practitioners may be disappointed that this chapter is not about ROI evidence but an exploration of possibilities for the future of ROI in PsyCap. However, the authors offer several models that simulate the use of PsyCap in large, middle, and small-sized firms and illustrate approaches to calculating PsyCap’s financial impact. Emphasizing the practical importance of PsyCap by measuring its impact on performance and return on investment can differentiate PsyCap from other human resource management approaches. As PsyCap grows in popularity, I look forward to more research and practice actively demonstrating PsyCap’s financial contribution.

Finally, the organization of the volume takes a novel approach. The chapters are structured in a way that makes reading easy and fun. Each chapter begins with a link to a video and closes with a link to a case study. These resources are publicly available via YouTube, TedTalk, and news websites and feature talks, interviews, and documentaries on topics related to PsyCap by prominent scholars and public figures. This novel approach turns the book into a multisensory experience. For instance, in the chapter on Hope (chapter 4), readers are led through a deep understanding of the topic via videos and clear definitions from literature. The chapter then offers approaches to nurturing hope in employees and leaders, and demonstrates its relationship with organizational culture and high performance. At the end of the chapter, two case studies—I AM Malaya and Good job= High hope—are offered for reflection and discussion. The videos in the book can serve as helpful brief introductions to PsyCap for those unfamiliar with the topic and case studies can serve as handy tools in the classroom. Finally, as a bonus, the book includes free online access to a Psychological Capital Questionnaire and personal report.

Overall, the book successfully provides a comprehensive understanding of PsyCap and potential constructs that can also build psychological capital. It includes a great amount of theoretical and empirical information for both scholars and practitioners. Researchers can benefit from accessing a broad body of evidence that supports PsyCap, and resources for those who are curious to learn in greater depth. This volume offers practitioners recommendations for interventions that can be applied to develop each resource of PsyCap. In addition, the links between PsyCap and organizational performance, teamwork, climates, and leadership can also help practitioners frame how PsyCap intertwines with tangible and intangible resources in the organizational context. Finally, the volume provides a wide range of valid and reliable measures of PsyCap. In particular, comprehensive models for assessing financial benefits and return on investment of PsyCap are a compelling aspect of the book.

In closing, I want to echo the authors’ claim that PsyCap should be viewed as a whole, which is greater than the sum of its individual components. Without a doubt, organizations have adopted numerous human resource management strategies to help organizations succeed, and often, the focus is on breaking-down into small manageable parts. However, as a core high order construct, PsyCap can add more value to research and practice in its holistic form. Having said that, this book gives me hope that PsyCap and the potential additions to it will become a new frame of reference in organizations.

The High Impact Leader
Takes you beyond static and inflexible leadership “rules” to help develop hands-on leadership skills within the unpredictable, often chaotic framework of everyday life. This results-based examination features wide-ranging research and examples of how real-world leadership has developed over the past century. It details a program for accelerating your authentic leadership development that is realistic and achievable, for individuals in virtually any personal or professional environment.

Leadership Development in Balance: Made/Born
Are leaders born or made? Bruce J. Avolio, a leading expert in this field, states if you believe leaders are just born you will probably not develop to your full leadership capacity. The goal of this book is to provide the reader with a broader and deeper understanding of what constitutes “authentic leadership development” and how that can be applied to each reader’s development as a leader.

Full Range Leadership Development
Over the last decade, the full range model has become the most researched model in the leadership literature- and the most validated- and has proved to be an accurate guide for developing exemplary leadership in diverse cultures, organizations, and leadership positions. The new edition shows how the process of leadership development is linked to validation and how the process of validation informs accelerated leadership development.

No People
Who hasn’t scurried along the cliffs of uncertainty, not always as sure footed as one would like to be? There are many who can’t imagine a life away from the cliff’s edge, where great advances are sown and catastrophic failures constantly loom. In every area of our lives, cliffs unexpectedly present themselves, which may trigger a completely new course correction. Hanging back from the cliffs is certainly an option, one chosen by those who embrace a distant and safer view. Others revel in seeking out those cliffs because it is at the cliff’s edge where the most interesting trails and exploration reside.
Those who are the cliff dwellers must consider the advantage of bringing on your journey a trusted member of the No People (NPs). They are not the average Sherpa willing to carry your load in quiet compliance. They are the people who know when you need to hear “no”—especially when you are most likely to ignore their advice. I have written this book to underscore the critical role that the No People play in organizations and communities around the world. They are often a fragile group of diminishing numbers and safe sanctuaries (in places where leaders carelessly walk along the cliffs, ignorant of constituent and stakeholder interests and points of view, they have become nearly extinct). These are some NP tribal stories; tales of how this tribe continues to positively shape our world.

Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organizations
People interested in developing their own leadership potential, or the leadership potential of those around them, will find a wealth of knowledge in Full Leadership Development. The author, Bruce J. Avolio, approaches the concept of leadership as a system, not only as a process or a person. His framework is based on what he defines as the full range of leadership: people, timing, resources, the context of interaction, and the expected results in performance and motivation. He contends that when a leadership system is optimized, it in turn optimizes the vital force of each individual, thereby enhancing the collective force of the entire organization. The relationships between the individuals in this system, and the mutual development within each relationship, make up the essence of leadership. The quality of the relationships between the leadership, their peers, and followers is a source of enrichment for all involved.

Psychological Capital: Developing the Human Competitive Edge
Although there are as many answers to the question of how organizations can gain competitive advantage in today’s global economy as there are books and experts, one lesson seems very clear: traditional answers and resources are no longer sufficient. This seminal book offers not only an answer regarding how to gain competitive advantage through people, but also a brand new, untapped human resource – psychological capital, of simply PsyCap. Generated from both the positive psychology movement and the authors’ pioneering work on positive organizational behavior, PsyCap goes beyond traditionally recognized human and social capital. But PsyCap is not a vague or unscientific concept. : to be included in PsyCap, a given positive construct must be based on theory, research, and valid measurement; must be open to development; and must have measurable performance impact. The positive constructs that have been determined to best meet these PsyCap criteria, efficacy (confidence), hope, optimism, and resiliency, are covered in separate chapters in Psychological Capital. After exploring other potential positive constructs such as creativity, wisdom, well-being, flow, humor, gratitude, forgiveness, emotional intelligence, spirituality, authenticity, and courage, the authors summarize the research demonstrating the performance impact of PsyCap. They go on to provide the PsyCap Questionnaire (PCQ) as a measurement tool, and the PsyCap Intervention (PCI) as a development aid. Utility analysis indicates that investing in the development of PsyCap as presented in this book can result in a very substantial return. In total, Psychological Capital provides theory, research, measurements, and methods of application for the new resource of psychological capital, a resource that can be developed and sustained for competitive advantage.